Arthur Train

“ Life had never been so worth living. No one, he resolved, should ever suspect how small and narrow he had been before. He would always be the cheerful, generous, kindly chap for whom everybody seemed to take him. ”

“ Brown meant well enough, I guess, but he was an odd creature. His great ambition evidently was to get into society. Every Sunday he would put on his togs and call on all the unfortunate people he knew. Finally everybody showed him the door. He got to be so intolerable that the department fired him, to our intense relief. No one cared what became of him—so long as he only went. But Curtis—you remember old Curtis with the white hair and mustache?—he felt sorry for Brown and thought we ought at least to make a pretense of regret at having him leave. ”

“ He had become a new man by reason of a little human sympathy.
"How busy people are!" he thought. "I guess I'll have another try at Rogers." He crossed the Avenue, found the house, and rang the bell. The bay-window of the drawing-room was on a level with where he stood, and he caught a glimpse of Mrs. Rogers sitting beside a cozy tea table, and of little Jack playing by the fire. The maid, slipping aside the silk curtain before opening the door, inspected the visitor.
"Mrs. Rogers is not at home."
Brown was paralyzed at such open prevarication. ”

“ He listened vaguely, too comfortably happy to disclose himself.
"You've got a lot of college men, I hear, in the district attorney's office," remarked one of the group, evidently to Rogers. "How do you like the work down there?"
"Oh, well enough," came the reply. "Trying cases is always interesting, you know. By the way, Win, speaking of college men, exactly who is your friend Brown?"
The dreamer behind the curtain smiled to himself. "Rogers might well ask that," he thought.
"Brown?" return Winthrop. "You wrote me he was in New York, didn't you? Why, you must have known him in Cambridge. ”

“ All about him jingled the sleigh-bells; long lines of equipages carrying gorgeously dressed women moved in continuous streams in each direction; hundreds of lamps began to gleam in the windows and along the Avenue ”

“ Obviously, thought Brown, Winthrop was confusing him with someone else.
"No, no," exclaimed Rogers impatiently, "you mean Nelson Brown; but he's on a tobacco plantation down in Cuba. The man I speak of is a little chap with a big head and protruding ears. You introduced me to him at the Colonial Club a year ago last spring." ”